


Blood of My Blood

by Quinara



Category: Greek and Roman Mythology
Genre: Drabble, Gen, Seneca, comment!fic
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2010-08-19
Updated: 2010-08-19
Packaged: 2017-10-11 04:07:05
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Graphic Depictions Of Violence
Chapters: 1
Words: 275
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/108201
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Quinara/pseuds/Quinara
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>It's the second child that's killing her.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Blood of My Blood

**Author's Note:**

  * For [vass](https://archiveofourown.org/users/vass/gifts).



> Written for medie's [Awesome People of Colour are Awesome Comment-a-Thon](http://medie.livejournal.com/1759238.html), to vassilissa's prompt: Greek Mythology, Medea, survival.
> 
> [This fic takes Seneca's _Medea_ as its 'source'.]

It's the second child that's killing her. Late and heavy, it tortures her for hours as she lies screaming, her legs spreadeagled as her midwife plies her trade. The whole affair drags on like a reminder of Jason's slow but steady abandonment, the dinners at the palace that began three months ago, the way she has lain for a month untouched by his hands.

Creusa is too young to be married yet - though Medea remembers such facts are never so fixed as one might assume, there is for the moment no danger to her house. Still, all the while she screams and screams to be delivered from her pain, her callous husband does not come. Not to see the birth of his second son. Not to see the death of his wife, all too imminent.

There is blood on her thighs, hot and wet and flowing from her, but it's not enough to ease the baby's passage. She is dying, she knows she is, and though her body is enamelled with sweat her hands feel dry as bone.

It feels wrong, that she should die like this. Grown men have lain in pieces beneath her hands, yet here she is being ripped apart by a mere infant? How can this... _How?_

As Medea slips into unconsciousness, forcing the child's shoulders out into the world, she vows she will survive this, that she will never be this weak again. It is only when the vow is fully formed inside her that she allows her mind release.

The nurse calls her a witch when she wakes up alive; Medea laughs it off, a smile on her face.


End file.
